


Breaks In The Conversation

by DaScribbla



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Drabble, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Morning After
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 05:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2139375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaScribbla/pseuds/DaScribbla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their time together is full of silences. Whenever they feel themselves on the edge of a chasm in the conversation. One wrong step could mean addressing things they aren’t ready to address. Saying things that haven’t been and likely don’t need to be said anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaks In The Conversation

**Author's Note:**

> File Under: It Was Midnight And This Story Has No Point.

There are things you just don’t say. Things that make your throat close up, as if it’s been filled with cotton balls. Words that make you choke. 

Their time together is full of silences. Whenever they feel themselves on the edge of a chasm in the conversation. One wrong step could mean addressing things they aren’t ready to address. Saying things that haven’t been and likely don’t need to be said anyway. 

Simon leans his head back against the pillow and presses his mouth to Kieren’s palm.

Their conversations are defined more by what is not said than what is. If Kieren questions the scar on Simon’s back, he makes no attempt to voice it. Merely runs his hand through his hair and swings his legs over the side of the bed, reaching for his jeans. 

“I have to get back. Mum’ll kill me as it is.”

Simon smiles, not replying as he watches Kieren pull on his clothes. Sensation is something new, a barely remembered privelige from a time he’d rather not recall. So many things you’d be better off not feeling. Simon catches himself wondering if Kieren can remember the pain of his passing and closes down upon the thought. His imagination is unconquerable though, and he can’t stop the visions of him clutching his wrists, gritting his teeth in pain as the rain plasters his cornsilk hair to his forehead, his tears blending with the rain. Flavoring the mud with traces of salt. 

Sensation. Neither curse nor blessing, like most of the things life has to offer. Just another thing: neutral and yet quietly malicious in its realism. But freeing in its beauty, when it decides to be kind. A gift of dubious intent from his nervous system. Back online, back in the swing of things. 

Last night was a gift in itself, a high point in their ongoing series of lows. 

Kieren asked once more about the city, why Simon had to leave. Sometimes, we like hold a foot out over the chasm, just for the rush. Just to flirt with danger for a little while. Simon asked about Rick again. Both only gave the minimum of details, unwilling to divulge the full stories. That’s for later, when they’ve both learned everything they can about each other without taking the fall. 

Last night was a baby fall, plunging gently into new depths. Terrifying in their own way, yet beatable. And if Simon’s tears seem almost guilty as he drags his pale lips down skin just as white, if Kieren seems to shy away from touch occasionally, neither says anything. Making love is void of words, void of conscious thought. Everything is instinct and stuttering breath and lust-dark eyes...

“In the odd chance that she spares you, could you see yourself possibly coming back again tonight?” Simon smiles as Kieren laughs, rolling his eyes. 

“You haven’t got an ounce of shame, do you?”

That’s not quite true and they both know it. The picture on Simon’s dresser says otherwise, in large and bold letters. The blood in his flashbacks scream the contrary. The knife buried in the garden howls in denial. But he doesn’t dwell on it.

“With you? Never.”

A lie as well, but Kieren doesn’t need to know about the city or what the Prophet had demanded. Simon doesn’t belong to the Prophet anymore. He’s lost himself to the blond boy who’d applied his mousse and worn his contacts almost religiously, whom he’d pushed so violently against his kitchen wall, so ready for reawakening with someone new... 

Passion doesn’t require a nervous system. It is sensation driven wild, blind need white-hot in the mind and the chest. And Simon’s faculties are sharp, overrun with it. 

Not for the first time, he wonders how one kiss can change everything. A single affirmation that someone legitimately wanted him and Simon gave up his crusade for more. In the end, he is not his beliefs, but other people’s need for him. The possibility that Kieren may one day stop needing him is not an option for consideration. For this moment-- Simon under the covers, Kieren doing up the zipper of his jeans-- they are eternal. 

Simon rarely questions the day he returned. Not out loud. His brain is on fire with possibilities, but he refuses to voice them. Not until the moment when Kieren will say,

_“Simon, I have to talk to you about that day. The day you came back to me.”_

You can’t, Simon often tells himself, attend a party before the invitation is sent. Although, if the truth is ever confirmed in words, it will be no cause for celebration. Simon can refuse to talk and refuse to listen if he chooses, but there is nothing he can do to make himself blind.

Granted, there is always more than one explanation, but Simon cannot summon up more than one or two for why there are finger-shaped bruises on Kieren’s skinny hips and on the insides of his thighs-- not made in love. The rope burns on his wrists and ankles are just as damning. 

Were the statistics for PDS violence against the living not so controversial, Simon would have hunted Gary Kendal down long ago.

“You okay?” Kieren sits beside Simon, touching his shoulder. “You looked pretty far away.”

Simon kisses him in answer, running a hand through soft blond hair. Kieren nods in understanding and puts his arms around him, letting him lean into his touch. They watch their fingers threading together in the yellow light of daybreak. They say nothing.

Silence has a way expressing what words can’t. It’s a higher form of communication, of articulation. Punctuated by touch, closeness. 

 _Imperfect,_ Simon thinks, sucking gently on Kieren’s fingertip. _But ours._

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, this happened. Note that this was literally written at midnight. In response to the Gary/Kieren thing: I put that in because that scene in Kieren's bedroom in the season 2 finale had way too many similarities to sexual assault to really ignore.


End file.
